The fires are linked everywhere in Europe. After Marseille a few weeks ago, after Greece and Turkey, after Spain and Portugal, it is Aude, which has just undergone one of the most important fires in history in France. In six days, between 13,000 and 17,000 hectares were smoked in the department, according to the latest estimates. An almost record figure, a sign of a year 2025 already extreme in terms of drought and fire in France but also everywhere in Europe. In mid-July 2025, more than 230,000 hectares of land had thus burned in the European Union, 117 % more than the average of the last two decades, according to information from the European Forest Fire Information System.
Thousands of firefighters mobilized, evacuated inhabitants and threatened entire districts: history becomes recurrent in a Europe increasingly dried up by the climate crisis. The forecasts of the various European scientific organizations go all in the same direction. The risk of fire will only strengthen, with the rise in temperatures and the disturbance of water cycles. A report by the Scientific Advisory Council of European Academies (EASAC) published in May thus provides that the risk of fires should double on the continent by 2100.
All of Europe vulnerable to fires
Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Türkiye … The countries around the Mediterranean are the most affected. But in the future, all European countries should be affected. According to a report coordinated by the United Nations Environment Program, it is even the countries of Central Europe and the Baltic countries that may know the most significant increases in burned areas, due to global warming. In France, same observation. According to Météo-France, almost all of the metropolitan territory should thus be threatened by the risk of fires by 2100. Even the territories today still relatively spared by the fires, in the northern half, should experience a significant increase in the risk of fires. As for already vulnerable territories, such as Provence or Mediterranean areas like Aude, the number of days “Very high dangers” (dry, hot and windy days) should be multiplied there by two by the end of the century, reaching more than 80 days a year.
However, the different European countries still seem badly anticipating this future. “We are not ready to face these risks”thus declared in 2023 the European Commissioner for Climate Action Wopke Hoekstra, after two years almost record for fires in Europe. On this occasion, he invited Europe and the member states to increase their investments in climate adaptation, and to review their adaptation and prevention strategies. However, things stagnate.
Insufficient means of control and prevention of fires
According to EASAC, “EU policies on forest fire mainly focus on emergency interventions.” This summer, European civil protection mechanisms, for example, made it possible to mobilize some 600 firefighters in areas at risk across Europe, and to deploy air resources to intervene quickly in the event of fires. A very low contingent, when you know that it took nearly 1,300 firefighters to fix the Aude fire. About twenty Canadians have also been ordered by certain member states, coordinated by European bodies: devices that will probably not be delivered before 2028 or 2029 … In the meantime, European means of intervention are aging and insufficient. But above all, by focusing on the means of struggle, Europe “limits the effectiveness of its policies to tackle the causes of the risk of fire “estimates the easac.
In terms of prevention, Europe has indeed still not “Targeted and coherent political framework”and the risk of fire is always managed “indirectly, disjoint, and fragmentary”, Pointe l’Easac. No coordinated risk assessment and risk anticipation policy has been implemented. The European Court of Auditors even recently pointed out the gaps in risk assessment systems in the most affected countries, such as Greece or Portugal. In France, the latest version of the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change (PNACC 3), published last year, joined the issue of fire risk for the first time. It provides in particular from“Integrate the effect of climate change in knowledge and mapping of the risk of fires.” But the plan is already criticized by environmental protection specialists, who deem it insufficient and too little funded. While ecological policies are increasingly called into question, whether in town planning, climate attenuation, protection of ecosystems or adaptation, the question of the prevention of risk of fire risk too, to go to the hatch.
Updated by writing on August 11 at 11 a.m.
